Counterattack



  Also by Bernard Wilkerson

  The Worlds of the Dead series

  Beaches of Brazil

  Communion

  Discovery

  The Creation series

  In the Beginning

  The Hrwang Incursion

  Earth: Book One

  Episode 1: Defeat

  Episode 2: Flight

  Episode 3: Maneuvers

  Episode 4: Insertion

  Episode 5: Envelopment

  Episode 6: Ambush

  Episode 7: Feint

  The Hrwang Incursion

  Book 1

  Earth

  Copyright © 2015 by Bernard Wilkerson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, with the exception of short quotes used in reviews, without permission from the author.

  Requests for permission should be submitted to [email protected].

  For information about the author, go to

  www.bernardwilkerson.com

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Cover photo courtesy of NASA.

  Episode 8

  COUNTERATTACK

  88

  Lizzy only fired at the oncoming vehicles in ten and twenty round bursts, carefully watching her last ammunition belt feed into the fifty caliber machine gun. With the death of the lieutenant in charge of the Southern Utah border post, she took command even though officially everyone else outranked her. They obeyed her nonetheless.

  She hadn’t actually used the phrase ‘until you see the whites of their eyes’, but she said something similar and her squad listened. They knew they would run out of ammunition long before they ran out of attackers. Every shot had to count.

  Help was thirty minutes out.

  Or maybe only twenty-five minutes out, if someone responded immediately to the ‘Mayday’ they’d sent, and if she’d tracked time correctly.

  She glanced down at her last belt of ammunition. Had she really fired that much in just five minutes? It seemed like an eternity, firing and firing, picking targets, shooting at anyone who looked like they tried to lead or tried to get through the gap in the concrete barriers.

  She’d plugged that gap nicely, no more vehicles coming through it, but vehicles poured around the sides, some heading out of range and down the length of the fencing. They’d find weak spots, break through, and eventually surround Lizzy and her people.

  She would die here unless the cavalry arrived from St. George soon.

  She knew that wasn’t possible. They couldn’t hold on for twenty-five more minutes. They didn’t have enough ammunition. The cavalry couldn’t, wouldn’t, arrive in time.

  But she could still hope.

  Lightning blossoming from the clouds surprised her. It struck vehicles in the back of the their attackers. Small dark shapes followed the lightning, darting around and firing on other vehicles. The volume of fire on Lizzy’s position lessened as attackers turned toward the clouds in confusion.

  A Hrwang combat craft appeared in the sky, lightning coming from its underbelly. A minivan exploded and the combat craft disappeared and reappeared at another location. A pickup truck with a machine gun like Lizzy’s mounted in the back tipped over sideways under the craft’s onslaught.

  Lizzy couldn’t have expected the rescuing cavalry to be in the form of aliens.

  No one touched those who fled. The Hrwang combat craft and its tiny drones focused on vehicles with occupants who still fought and Lizzy did the same, knowing she would soon run out of ammunition and would not be able to help.

  Just as she had reduced her rate of fire when ammunition ran low, the Hrwang seemed to be doing the same, smaller and smaller bursts of lightning coming from their craft’s belly as the battle wore on.

  Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the Hrwang craft recalled all of its drones and disappeared.

  There were still too many attackers.

  “Wait! What are we doing? Where are we going?” Jayla cried. She floated in her chair, her seat harness keeping her from tumbling around the inside of the Hrwang craft in the weightlessness. They were back in space.

  Weight returned unevenly, as did the sense of falling, as the craft tipped forward and began reentry.

  “Why did we leave?”

  “No power,” the Fifth Under Captain’s mellifluous voice replied. “Recharge.” He showed her words on his tablet. Jayla had trouble reading while the craft bucked and swayed its way back into Earth’s atmosphere, but she caught two words that had been translated into English.

  Static electricity.

  Jayla remembered a physics lessons taught by her father. She often learned more from him and the books he gave her than she did from high school, and she remembered him teaching her to rub balloons on her hair. She also remembered taking advantage of her lesson and scuffing her feet on the living room carpet in her socks, then reaching out and touching her little sister, the electrical discharge making the girl squeal and run. Her Daddy probably hadn’t considered that practical use of his instruction.

  The Hrwang combat craft’s main weapon required the build up of static electricity to charge it, which it received from entry into the atmosphere. The AI simply jumped into space and the craft reentered and recharged. The Hrwang had turned a limitation, that AIs wouldn’t jump back into atmosphere, into an advantage.

  Ammunition they didn’t need to carry between worlds.

  Clever people.

  It also made Jayla wonder how many other worlds they’d assaulted the way they had assaulted the Earth.

  She’d had complete faith in her rescuers, complete faith in her captain, her lover, until she’d seen the intercepted video broadcast of the events at the United Nations Headquarters. Now she didn’t know what to think. She stayed with the Fifth Under Captain because she loved him, but also because she didn’t know where else to go. She was afraid of other humans. None had treated her kindly since the attack, and although the other Hrwang had changed their attitudes toward her when she began sleeping with her captain, she knew he would always protect her.

  But when she thought of meteors raining from the sky, hitting cities and factories, destroying them like the meteor that had destroyed the tiny mountain hamlet in Idaho, when she thought of Hrwang combat craft striking aircraft and vehicles with their focused electrical discharges, only one word came to mind.

  Not rescuer or savior or even lover.

  Not friend or helper or even reluctant conqueror.

  Just one word.

  Ruthless.

  Lizzy had ten shots left, tops. She didn’t take the time to count the remaining rounds. She just kept her head down and watched for anyone with another grenade launcher, saving her precious ammunition for someone who could take out the guard house in one shot.

  The concrete barrier that funneled vehicles through its opening, now clogged with destroyed trucks and cars, also provided cover for the attackers. She wished she had the army rifles that came with the shells that killed people behind cover. She also wished for a mortar or a grenade launcher or simply for more ammunition.

  She wished the aliens would return.

  Dead and dying lay in and around the guard house under her. But the survivors still had rifles and pistols and fired just enough to keep the persis
tent attackers in their cover. The attackers returned enough fire back to keep the heads of Lizzy’s people down also.

  No vehicles moved within range of the guard house. After the aliens left, a group simply turned around and drove back the way they’d come, following those who had fled under the alien’s assault. Others remained parked around a portion of the fence a mile or so away, presumably working at it with whatever tools they possessed. It wouldn’t be long before they broke through. Passive defense systems never held up under determined attack.

  She longed to yell down to those who still fought below her, to reassure them or to reassure herself, but they wouldn’t hear her over the din of the shots that ricocheted off concrete barriers and walls. Climbing down off the roof would leave her exposed for too long.

  Out of ammunition for his sidearm, the spotter with her merely cowered under cover next to her, ready to take over firing the machine gun should she go down.

  Until she ran out of ammo. Then they’d both be trapped.

  Assessing the tactical situation, she realized something that impressed her. Whoever had determined the placement of the concrete barriers out on the freeway had chosen well. They were out of range of hand thrown grenades, meaning that attackers couldn’t hide behind them and throw grenades at the guard house.

  She didn’t know if her assailants had any hand grenades, none had been thrown yet, but it still seemed like a smart thing to do for defense.

  Someone popped up from behind the barrier with a nasty looking, large weapon, and Lizzy fired a burst in his direction. He went down, dead or just diving for cover, and Lizzy’s gun clicked.

  She was out of ammo.

  “What’s the plan, Captain?” Jayla asked. Reentry would be over soon, and the craft would be able to jump back anywhere.

  “We look.”

  “That’s it?”

  He grinned. “If they still fight, we try to scare more attackers away. Your plan. If not, we leave.”

  “Why wouldn’t they still be fighting?”

  “Many against few. Overrun.”

  “Can’t you make this thing go faster?” she pleaded.

  He shook his head. “Science.”

  Lizzy lay up against the concrete wall that ringed the top of the guard shack, the fifty caliber now behind her, and clutched her tiny pistol. She had twenty-four rounds, two clips, but she wouldn’t be able to hit anything farther than thirty or forty feet away. The spotter hid next to her, cursing at times and praying at others.

  She glanced down and noticed evidence that he’d wet himself. Poor guy. She didn’t stare but turned away and peeked over her cover toward her attackers.

  The fire had lessened significantly from both sides, everyone conserving ammunition, everyone waiting. She knew help from St. George could only be minutes away, ten at the most, but if everyone in the guard house and behind its defensive barrier had as little ammunition left as she did, they didn’t have ten minutes.

  The spotter had enough courage to glance through his binoculars at the group working on the fence. A shot glanced off his helmet and he fell sideways, swearing again. Lizzy crawled over to him.

  “You alive?”

  “I think you need to perform mouth to mouth,” he said and giggled stupidly.

  “Now’s not the time to clown around,” she replied with disgust.

  “Why not? We’re gonna die soon. Might as well enjoy what little life we have left.”

  “We’ll make it,” Lizzy replied with false confidence. “Help will arrive soon.”

  “Not soon enough. They’ve broken through the fence.”

  Lizzy couldn’t check to confirm. A renewed hail of fire struck the guard house and she had to keep her head down.

  She squirmed next to her spotter and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth.

  “That’ll have to do,” she whispered. He grinned back appreciatively.

  The renewed vigor of the attack signaled a change in strategy, keeping their heads down until the group at the fence could get into position and attack from the rear. She double checked her pistol and made sure her extra clip was ready.

  Get here soon, she prayed to whomever was coming to rescue them.

  “Where are we? What are we doing?”

  The Fifth Under Captain put his fingers on Jayla’s mouth. It was meant to quiet her questions, to hush her fears, but she found it incredibly sensual. If they’d been alone, if there hadn’t been an urgency to their actions, she would have taken him, have given him what pleased him. Instead she just kissed his fingers.

  He smiled.

  “Computer must calculate,” he said. “It doesn’t want to appear inside mountain.”

  “That would be bad,” she whispered, her lips brushing against his skin as she spoke.

  He shrugged. “We wouldn’t know.” He mimed instant death, tracing a finger from his chin to his belly. A motion with the same meaning as a human tracing a finger across her throat.

  Jayla understood.

 

  Concrete and sand protected the front of the guard house, but no such provisions had been made for the rear. The approaching attackers, about thirty to forty, Lizzy estimated with quick glances from the roof, crept closer, relying on the gunfire from behind the concrete barrier on the freeway to cover their movement. They also moved cautiously, perhaps worried about being hit by shots that went wide of their target.

  A valid concern.

  Still, they would be in position soon. Lizzy and the spotter would be sitting ducks. The fifty caliber had been the guard house’s greatest defense and without it, now that it had no ammunition left, they wouldn’t last seconds.

  The spotter’s ridiculous giggling turned to tears. Lizzy’s heart broke for the man and she put her arm around him, both of them hugging each other and hugging what little cover they had from the attackers behind them. Shells started raining in on them from that direction and Lizzy made herself as small a target as she could. She knew firing back was pointless. Her peashooter was useless. No one would get close enough to her for her to hit them with it until she was already dead.

  She started to cry and her bowels threatened to release from the fear. First you say it, then you do it, she recalled grimly from a comedy routine. It occurred to her she could just stand up and empty her gun and get it over with quickly. That would be better than cowering here until someone finally got the right angle on her and she died anyway.

  She squeezed her pistol and took the safety off.

  Jayla couldn’t feel the jump but the scenery out the cockpit window changed and she felt the discharge of the combat craft’s primary weapon. She smiled a little. They were back in action.

  Lizzy couldn’t believe her eyes as the alien ship appeared right over her, directing fire against the attackers behind the barrier.

  The ones in the back, she wanted to cry. The ones behind us! She pointed, not knowing if anyone could see her. She started firing blindly in that direction, knowing she couldn’t hit anything but hoping the aliens would notice.

  Her attackers did notice, though, and the firepower pouring into the guard house was redirected toward the roof. The spotter cried out when he was hit and Lizzy dropped her pistol as she made her body as tiny as possible against the forward wall. She could see someone shooting straight at her and if she could see him, he could see her.

  More shots hit the spotter and the smell of his feces and innards washed over her, blood spattering all over the roof. He didn’t cry out and she knew he was already dead. She closed her eyes and buried her head under her arms, wishing she’d kissed the man more passionately. He’d deserved it before he died.

  She made herself as small as possible behind his body.

  The expected shots didn’t hit her and she waited, crying a little.

  The firing stopped.

  She peeke
d between her arms and over the spotter’s hip. The shooter she’d seen was gone, a little, gray alien drone in the spot where he’d been. She couldn’t believe it. The aliens had saved her. She couldn’t hear anything more than isolated gunfire now, the alien ship hovering over the spot where the attackers who’d broken through the fence had moved into position, the tiny, gray drones flitting around everywhere, taking out those who still returned fire.

  She laughed. She’d lived. She stood up in relief, euphoria overcoming her, and then she felt the bullet strike and she went down, senseless.

  89